My time without you
by lisarazmotte
Summary: One-shot from Rhys POV set between acotar and acomaf...


Here's a one-shot I free-wrote a few days ago, set between acotar and acomaf from Rhys POV (not a very happy time for our boy I'm afraid...)

Hope you have as much fun reading it as I had writing it!I would appreaciate any feedback :)

He was going to drown. As Rhys winnowed away from the Mountain to the living room of the townhouse, where Mor was waiting for him, he knew he was going to drown on this thought. _She's my mate_. He'd known it, of course, but he hadn't expected it to rattle him this much when he saw her. He'd never experienced anything that strong before, nothing could compare to the feeling of wanting her, he could feel it in every bone of his body, singing to him as if in an ancient song, older than the world itself. _She's my mate_. Thanks to a tiny still rational part of his brain, he'd managed to get out before doing anything stupid. But it was all he could do not to go back and snatch her away to Velaris. The instinct was so strong, it was hard to control his winnowing.

Finally, he managed to solidify on the floor, and his cousin was in front of him immediately. Untouched, unharmed, beautiful. But still, his thoughts wouldn't move away from _her_ , the most important person in his universe. And when he tried to speak, to greet Mor and make sure she was okay, the only words that came out of his mouth were:

"She's my mate."

"What? Who? Rhys, are you okay?"

"She's my mate," he only repeated, the words like a balm to his aching soul, aching at the lack of her by his side, aching because he'd forced it away from her.

"Rhys, calm down. Talk to me. Who are you talking about?"

"Feyre," and her name was the most beautiful music in the world. He knew right then that he could spend his days thinking only of her name and he would be content for the rest of his life. Her name, her wonderful name that answered every question he hadn't been aware of. He stayed silent for the longest time after that, and Mor didn't say anything either, both of them seated on the floor. Finally, his lips parted, and everything poured out of him in somewhat inconsistent sentences:

"She's a human. She was human. She's High Fae now. She saved us all. She freed Prythian."

"Rhys I don't understand, please can you try to be clearer?"

The concern in his cousin's voice helped tethering him to the ground, long enough to pull his thoughts together and form more logical sentences:

"Feyre. She was human, and she was brought into Prythian through the Spring Court." He couldn't say _his_ name. "I had been seeing her in my dreams for years, and she was here to free us."

"A human? How would a human free us?"

"There was a curse. She could lift it with the right words but she didn't. She made a deal with… Amarantha. And she won and freed the magic, but Amarantha killed her," his skin recoiled at the memory of her dead human body. "We brought her back, all of us."

He fell silent and Mor stared at him:

"And she's your… mate?"

"Yes."

"Then where is she? Why didn't you bring her with you?"

The questions his entire being wanted to acknowledge: Where is she? Why isn't she with me? Why? Why? _Why?_

"Mor, she was here with… Tamlin. Years ago he told Amarantha he'd rather bed a human than her, and with what happened between Jurian and her sister… The curse was that she was supposed to fall in love with him despite her hate for our kind. And she did. She's with him."

The idea of his mate with _him_ almost made him vomit, or winnow to her to get her away, and he had to look right into Mor's eyes to stay where he was.

"She's with Tamlin?! Oh Rhys…" her voice died away and she took him in her arms. He didn't need words, he needed _her_. Feyre. He would never stop needing her, longing for her presence beside him. But he hugged Mor back, as he was starting to take in his surroundings. He was in Velaris, Mor was here, alive and well. He was _home_. He wriggled gently out of her embrace to look at her:

"Morrigan," the semblance of a smile formed on his lips as he realized it was all real. She was real, there in front of him. His dear cousin he'd spent hours dreaming about when the torture had been too great, when Amarantha had been too much for him to want to go on. And all of the sacrifices that he'd made for his family, his city… Looking at Mor's happy face, he knew it'd been worth it. They hugged again, and Mor spoke:

"Azriel, Cassian and Amren are on their way, do you want to delay for a bit? I mean, if you don't feel well…"

"No, no it's fine, I'll be fine." And he would be. After all, a mating bond was not necessarily a synonym for love, and he didn't know Feyre that much. And he couldn't have her anyway, so there was no point moping about it. He would be fine. His family was on the way, all of them safe and sound, and _real_ , after 50 years apart. "I need to tell all of you what happened."

Mor nodded, and he realized that in his panic, he'd told her more than he'd intended. There was no point telling anyone about the mating bond, not when his mate was in love with another male, and thinking of him as an enemy. He had decided to keep it to himself before leaving the Mountain, but seeing Feyre had shaken him so much the words had come out without filter. So now, Mor knew. But there was no reason to tell the others.

"Mor, can we keep what I told you between us?"

"Alright."

A knock on the front door, and his brothers entered without waiting for an answer. In seconds, he was surrounded by them, and they were all laughing and crying into each other's arms. Amren stood in the entrance of the room, and greeted him with a soft but somewhat joyful "High Lord" before sinking onto a chair. He let go of Cassian and Azriel and said "There is a lot I need to tell you."

The atmosphere of the room changed at that, and everybody sat down to listen to him. He didn't know exactly how to start, how much to tell them about his suffering and his actions during those last fifty years. But Cassian helped him:

"So are you going to tell us how you were freed? Azriel went looking for answers those last few hours, but nobody seems to know what happened exactly. Is Amarantha actually dead?"

"She is. Tamlin killed her." Oh, how much he regretted not being the one killing her, not watching the light go out of her eyes, as he'd dreamed it for years when she was in bed with him. But it was done now, and at least she was dead.

"Rhys," Azriel started, his voice methodical and calm, "We know very little of what happened those fifty years. Since yesterday I just managed to gather which High Lord was alive, which had been killed, which Court was spared or not. The informations are very shady, it seems that Tamlin had a big role to play? Also, some human girl I didn't get the name of?"

That was it, he needed to tell them the story of Feyre and how she'd saved them all. His soul was still crying out to her, trying to reach her through that bond they shared. But his voice remained miraculously calm when he spoke:

"Tamlin didn't do _anything_. But he was part of what freed us. Years ago, a few months after she'd stolen our powers, Amarantha threw a party and cursed Tamlin. She had wanted to take him to bed but he'd refused, and had told her he'd rather bed a human. You can imagine how pissed she was at that. She cursed him, told him she'll give him his powers back if he could make a human woman fall in love with him. The woman needed to hate our kind enough to have killed a fae, and to tell him she loved him. He had 49 years to win. But he did nothing. Until about a year ago when apparently he started to send males back across the wall in the hope to break the curse. And it worked. This woman you heard about Azriel, she killed one of his sentries and Tamlin brought her into Prythian."

"So did she fall in love with him? Did she break the curse, is that what happened?"

"Yes," and the next words stung his tongue, "she fell in love with him, but she didn't break the curse in time and Tamlin was taken Under the Mountain. But she came back for him, and she made a deal with Amarantha. If she managed to complete three tasks of Amarantha's choosing, Tamlin's court, his power, would be free."

"That's a fool's bargain," Cassian interrupted.

"It was, but Feyre won all her tasks nonetheless. And Tamlin killed Amarantha on the spot after she broke Feyre's neck." The words were killing him. Her name, the image of death in her eyes, the joy of seeing the light come back,... It was all too much. "But we were all there, all the High Lords, and we brought her back."

"Like Myriam. So there's three of us now," Amren said, her voice no more than a whisper.

Mor must have seen the look on his face, the difficulty he had talking, because she rose and said:

"Rhys, you can give us more details later about all of this. For now, we need to get organized. Azriel, tell him what you learned."

"While you were gone and we were stuck in Velaris, it became a bit chaotic in your territory. Keir is still ruling the Hewn City on a pretty tight leash, so they stayed within their borders, even though I'm sure he won't be happy to see you. But the Illyrians took advantage of the lack of commands to expand their territory, initiate wars between camps, take up clipping their females again,... we'll have a lot of work to get them back like it used to be."

"Alright," Rhys said after considering this information. "There's also the matter of Hybern. The King was preparing for war fifty years ago, and I doubt he's abandoned the idea. We need to have spies there as soon as possible, as well as in the other courts. He's going to take advantage of our weakness, we need to be prepared."

For a long time nobody talked, until Cassian said with a smile:

"It's good to have you back, brother."

 _Two weeks after Under the Mountain_

Amarantha was smiling at him, straddling him in a way that he could not move, couldn't do anything but look at her as she took her pleasure on top of him, her fingernails scraping his tattoos as if to rip them off. He wanted to kill her, the world was twirling around him until there was only Amarantha left, until even she disappeared but he still couldn't move, strapped on the floor, the only sensations the ghost of her body and his rising nausea. But then the setting changed, and he wasn't in her room anymore, he was in the Throne Room, and the female High Fae was kneeling in front of him, reciting prayers. Except when the hood was taken off, it wasn't the dead Fae. It was Feyre, her beautiful face contorted in pain and covered in tears, but he didn't hesitate as he plunged the dagger into her heart.

Rhys jerked awake, his eyes wide in terror as he looked at his hands and realised he _wasn't_ killing his mate. He was awake, he knew it, but yet the vision didn't leave his mind. He saw from her eyes as she got out of bed and ran to the bathroom, got on her knees and started puking. For a second he wanted to join her and caress her back to help her through the pain, but the rational part of him reminded him that she was in the Spring Court, not here, and she would not want to see him. Plus, her dear High Lord was probably on his way to comfort her himself. It wasn't the first time he'd woken up to visions of her retching in the middle of the night. It had started mere two days after his return and had happened nearly every night since. But the dream… it had been her nightmare, he was sure of it. Did she really have dreams in which she killed herself? The thought was unbearable to him, the idea that she might feel bad enough that she might not have the will to live anymore... His heart skipped a beat at that. He went to the bathroom and splashed cold water on his face, the images of their intertwined dreams still fresh. It was going to be a long night.

 _One month after Under the Mountain_

He didn't know how he had been able to spend fifty years without flying. As he roamed alone through the Illyrian steppes, enjoying the currents of warm air tickling his wings, he wondered again how he had endured it for so long. The faces of his brother sprang to life in his mind, the face of a few citizens of Velaris too: the owner of that lovely restaurant across the Sidra, the couple of High Fae living across the street, that he'd seen the day before with their newborn youngling, Amren's face during their last meeting, eyes closed and drinking heavily the blood he'd brought to her. It had been worth it. Because if he hadn't suffered fifty years of Amarantha, the restaurant might have been ash and cinders, ad the youngling might have never been born.

But he was free now, free of her wretched body and free to fly through the skies again. In his waking hours, at least. Sleep still escaped him, his night tormented by nightmares of being pinned down on a bed, of his wings being torn off, of Feyre's neck snapping again and again without ever coming back to life. Tormented by her nightmares too, killing the two High Faes, the blood of a Nagga drowning her, the bloody pelt of an enormous gray wolf turning into human skin… Every night he woke up to her thoughts, and every night he wanted nothing more but to winnow to her and hold her. It was another form of torture, the longing for her, the need to talk to her and touch her and kiss her. The week before, Cassian had asked him to tell him in great details the first task she'd had to endure, and Rhys had been more than happy to talk freely about her for so long without having to come up with an excuse, or without having to seek out Mor. His thoughts drifted constantly to her, whereas he was alone in bed, or in a meeting at the Hewn City, or listening to Azriel's daily reports. Sometimes, she even sent him images and thoughts, when she felt too much all of a sudden - the rush of fear when she entered a room too small or saw a glimpse of Lucien's hair unexpectedly.

As if he'd summoned it, one of those feelings came to him through the bond. But it was not horrified for once, it was almost… joyful. Almost. He felt his heart warm up at the idea that she was getting better, but then the images flooded his mind. A meadow under the Spring light, and Tamlin, kneeling in front of her, a golden and emerald ring in his hand. Rhys came back to his reality and had to land in a hurry, incapable of forming a rational thought. She was going to marry him. That had been a wedding ring in _his_ hand. He couldn't breathe, couldn't think outside of the ring.

Hours later, he winnowed back to the camp, and listened to Azriel's report. Among other news of the different Courts, Spring had announced the engagement of Tamlin, High Lord, and Feyre Cursebreaker.

 _Three months and a half after Under the Mountain, two days before the wedding_

Two days. Two days before she was bound to his enemy forever. Rhys was seated at the desk in his bedroom, alone except for a bottle of liquor and a large glass. As time went on, everything was becoming harder. He didn't want his family to see he wasn't recovering, so he kept the moments of weakness contained to his room. They didn't know. He hadn't told them what Amarantha had made him do, what she'd used him for. He didn't see the point in telling them, not when there was nothing they could have done to help him while he'd been forced to kill and torture, and tortured and fucked himself.

A flash of images took over his vision, along with waves of… pleasure? He saw a bedroom in the night, saw a pair of female legs moving against the sheets. And between those legs, a blonde head moving, while broad hands ending in claws were holding on to the thin thighs.

He got up and ran to the bathing room. A second later, he was vomiting. The retching continued as he kept on seeing flashes of bodies interlaced together, as he kept hearing moans and whispers of love, incapable of blocking them out. Finally, the visions and the puking stopped, but Rhys didn't get up. He stayed seated on his bathroom floor, head in his hands, trying to calm down. He let his head fall against the wall behind him and looked at the stars outside, his vision blurry with tears he didn't bother to stop.

It wasn't fair. He knew he didn't deserve her, knew he could never be with her. He'd spent a considerably large portion of time trying to forget her those last few months. But did he have to endure images of his greatest enemy having _sex_ with her?! If he was to forget her, why did he have to suffer through this? Maybe he sounded like a child, but while the tears kept on rolling down his cheeks, he thought again: _it's not fair_.

And outside the images of sex, she was sending him so many mixed messages that he didn't know what to make of it. She seemed to enjoy nothing these days, not the preparations of her wedding, not the walks on the garden, not the painting. It broke his heart a little every time he felt her panic or sorrow and could do nothing to help her. But it wasn't his role, Tamlin was the one blessed with her presence and her love and the honor of helping her get better. And two days from now, it would be his for the rest of their life together.

He needed a drink. Or a hundred.

 _Three months and a half after Under the Mountain, the day of the wedding_

He grabbed a second bottle of liquor and passed it down to Cassian. It was nearly night already, and he knew he needed to be passed out in the next two hours if he wanted to avoid the visions of Tamlin making love to _his_ mate.

In about five minutes, she'd be lost forever, married to the man she loved for the rest of eternity. Maybe the visions would stop afterwards, maybe he could try to think less about her. Highly unlikely to happen, he thought as he sat down again and listened to an already kind of drunk Cassian ramble about the new assortment of knives he'd gotten for the Winter Solstice. He was about to answer when his vision blurred.

Red everywhere. On the floor, along pool of rose petals marking a path. On her hands, blood dripping down on the white wedding dress. And then words: _murderer, liar, unworthy, shackles_ , mixed with more images of the crowd of the the wedding, the crowd Under the Mountain, and Tamlin, magnificent and a hand extended to her. And finally, her voice, more afraid than anything, praying: _Help me. Save me. Get me out, end this_.

He winnowed without thinking twice about it, leaving Cassian to his knives. As he appeared amidst darkness and thunder - a cheap trick, but he wanted the crowd to disperse - he saw her, the female lacing his every thought, finally here in front of him. But she was not looking good. She was so… thin. It looked like her arms could break at the faintest touch for how weak they looked. Her collar bone appeared at the front of the hideous dress, and her face. As she turned to him, he saw the violet circles under her eyes, covered by makeup but still there. He wanted to take her in his arms, help her, but he remembered the role he was supposed to play if he wanted to get her out, and, straightening the lapels of his jacket, he purred:

"Hello, Feyre Darling."


End file.
